Tales of adventures in quilting, gardening, photography and cooking from the Kingdom of Chiconia

ScrapHappy August

A new ScrapHappy landmark for me!

Once again, it’s the day my friend Gun in Sweden and I host ScrapHappy, a day for showing something made from scraps.

I’ve finally made enough (25) scrappy postage stamp blocks to start assembling the quilt they were intended for. The proposed layout has the blocks laid out in a 5 x 5 square arrangement, with wide sashing between them. The sashing will be split by a narrow joining strip – yes, this is going to be another QAYG, for speed and ease – in the same bright scrappy colours as I’ve used for the postage stamp blocks themselves, for visual interest.

I’m going to bend the (not very strict) rules a little here. To my mind the wide sashing cannot be made from scrap; I want all one solid colour or the thing will be visual chaos. But the major design elements of the quilt will be scrap, so I’m letting myself call this a ScrapHappy quilt. Still a good bit of work to do, cutting the sashing strips, making loads of scrappy joining strips, quilting, etc, but it’s gone from a pile of blocks to having a destination. The back will be made up of oddments and fat quarters from my stash which I never have and never will use, so they might as well be scrap!

ScrapHappy is open to anyone using up scraps – no new fabrics. It can be a random or formal quilt block, a pillow or pincushion, a bag or hat, a collage or rag rug. Anything made of scraps is eligible. If your scrap collection is out of control and you’d like to turn them into something beautiful instead of leaving them to collect dust in the cupboard, why not join us on the 15th of each month? Either email me at the address shown on my Contact Me page, or leave a comment below. You can also contact Gun via her blog to join. You don’t have to worry about a long term commitment or even join in every month, just let either of us know a day or so in advance if you’re new and you’ll have something to show, so we can add your link.

Here are the links for everyone who joins ScrapHappy from time to time (they may not post every time, but their blogs are still worth looking at):

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25 thoughts on “ScrapHappy August”

I’m looking forward to seeing these blocks set together. So glad you’ve found a way to get the quilting done that works for you. I’m going to have a pile of binding to do when James finally gets all my recent tops finished! (I also need to bite the bullet and use up some old yardages for backs – or something. New fabric just keeps coming faster than I can get the old used up!)

Funny how common that new fabric problem is, isn’t it? I’m welcoming the almost scrappy backing for these blocks as the perfect way to get rid of fabrics I was given or just don’t love so much any more. At present, I’m standing at my bench trimming all the blocks out to a standard size so I can start adding the sashing.

It’s going to be lots of brilliant little islands of colour, surrounded by calm seas of grey! But the scrap stash reduction is really pretty trivial, it’s going to take loads more projects like this to make any kind of visible difference.

Love your postage stamp blocks. I can hardly wait to see how they go together with the QAYG. I see nothing wrong with using a not-scrappy in between fabric. It will pull things together and keep it from being a mish-mosh like my Vortex quilt.

I put the wide plain colour sashing on this morning, and I love how it rests the eye between the busy postage stamp blocks. I’ve gone for a mid iron grey solid. The stripy, scrappy narrow sashing’s going to look great, too!

Oh, I hear you! Life is simply too short to sort and trim them, isn’t it? And yet, I can’t bear to throw away even the tiniest bits of especially favourite fabrics… And you’re on the link list for next month. When I remember, I send out a reminder email a few days before, so if you’d like to be included in this, just send an email to the address show on my Contact Me page 🙂